Anime for people who hate anime

lol

paranoia agent

in 72 point bold red font

yeah that one

<3 nichijou

ghost hound. sorta like twin peaks x lain with an amazing dark ambient score.

i don't really like anime but i much enjoyed serial experiments: lain and texhnolyze

def rec all of yuasa's stuff, especially Ping Pong and my favorite, The Tatami Galaxy. funny (even if you don't really "get" anime humor) and manic and inspiring and brilliantly animated.

my other favorite ever is kids on the slope, a coming of age story from shinichiro watanabe ( cowboy bebop, samurai champloo ) about a love triangle between three jazz-obsessed teenagers in 1960s small town japan. the music sequences are incredible.

would recommend Wandering Son (Hourou Musuko), a show about a boy who likes to dress as a girl and a girl who likes to dress as a boy. Surprisingly thoughtful exploration of transsexualism and gender identity, a million miles away from how these subjects are usually handled in anime. Also has a beautiful watercolour art style.

paranoia agent

in 72 point bold red font

― Bouncy Castlevania (Will M.), Sunday, September 13, 2015 11:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that one

― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Sunday, September 13, 2015 11:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

oh yeah, kids on the slope! I've only seen a few episodes but the premise kills me

kids on the slope is pretty good, otm about the music sequences

my rec is Redline, one movie that i might say is more intense and thrilling from start to finish than mad max

mad max fury road that is

fyi there's also this thread Animation Snob Thread (no Disney, no Pixar, no mainstream anime, mention Family Guy and you get kicked out a window), puppet films are allowed whihc i've had bookmarked forever

if strongo were still here he'd tell you to check out Mind game. he's not so I'm going to tell you to check out mind game.

Redline is really good in places but I don't think it has the momentum or overall quality of Fury Road. I felt the character development was unnecessary.

just finished Berserk which was enjoyable but it might be too "anime"

As to the question of the thread, it depends on what one hates about anime. I'm generally not a fan but I can deal with the things I don't like if there's enough other good things going on. But I can't pretend I haven't seen a lot of ecchi trash (a true guilty pleasure).
A lot of the better anime still has a lot of the things some people dislike about anime, like the drawing styles. I've always preferred far more textured animation and unusual expressive techniques.

The thing that impressed me about the Satoshi Kon stuff is how well the scenes are composed. Most of the anime I had seen was very sloppy and badly edited.
Paranoia Agent is actually my least favourite of his works. It's probably supposed to be confounding but I don't think it really carried off on the intrigue they built early on, I found a lot of it a tad boring and the animation quality drops in a few places.

Like I recommend in Animation Snob Thread, Keita Kurosaka is the least typical Japanese animator I know of but his work isn't easy to find. Angel's Egg is a lovely science fiction mood piece without much (any?) dialogue, with designs by Yoshitaka Amano.

Berserk (90s tv version) does an impressive job of telling the early best part of the comic saga despite clear time/budget constraints and even improving some parts of the story. Great soundtrack too.
The later film series version doesn't allow the story time to develope and breathe properly. It feels too much like a summary.

Satoshi Kon is definitely one of the go-to anime directors for people who aren't anime fans. Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers are all great movies in different ways. Paprika was a bit weak story-wise IMO, but is still worth a watch.

Paranoia Agent is pretty great too, although I think the series loses a lot of momentum once it abandons the initial set-up - those stand alone episodes in the middle are great, but the over-arching plot kinda gets lost.

I'll second the recommendations for Mushishi, Kino and Lain above, and add Haibane Renmei, which is intriguing and reflective in a similar way.

Planetes is a pretty solid sci-fi series with good characters and little in the way of anime cliches.

Haibane is excellent but I gotta disagree about Planetes, i watched the series after reading the manga and was super disappointed with the adaption, they really anime-ed it up by adding in lots of comedy sidekicks and useless drama. Don't even get me started about that last episode :(

haibane renmei is incidentally all on hulu plus

I liked Haibane Renmei too. I'll also throw Psycho Pass out there for anyone into Philip K Dick sort of themes. It's on Netflix for easy access.

thx for the many recs y'all, I need as much distraction as possible at present

Seconding Mind Game, and reposting from the Netflix thread to remind people that Studio 4C put up a batch of films a couple of weeks ago- Mind Game, Genius Party and Genius Party Beyond (which are both mixed, but each has a fairly lengthy short from respectively Masaaki Yuasa and Koji Morimoto that are among the best things either have ever done), and Princess Arete (which I haven't watched yet but is supposed to be a gentle, Ghibli-esque thing?).

I don't know how easy it is to get outside the kickstarter, but Yuasa's Kick-Heart is pretty fun. And the adaptation of Taiyo Matsumoto's Ping Pong is well worth your time- I love Michael Arias's Tekkonkinkreet movie, but Ping Pong is a much more faithful translation of Matsumoto's style to animation and it's gorgeous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcSuAhbtIFg

Crap, sorry, didn't see Ping Pong was already recommended twice >_<

Less than four minutes long, but this Ken Ishii video by Morimoto is kind of a classic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6maVVFs0As

One last thing before I shut up about Morimoto:

NOISEMAN SOUND INSECT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPOlYfHdpwU

Dumb qn from someone v.far outside but a lot of suggestions seem to be, say, post-PKD-ish ... is there much in the way of, IDK, George Eliot/Jane Austen-y stuff?

Josei anime would be the term, from a quick look at manga categories, I guess?

This was Google's first result, anyone want to comment on any of these? http://www.themarysue.com/josei-anime/

wow, that ping pong series looks amazing! excited to see it's on hulu.

From that Josei list:
Michiko & Hatchin stars two female characters but it's much closer to Black Lagoon/Tarantino territory, lots of action set pieces and stylish baddies. It's really well made but is twice as long as it needs to be tbh, towards the end you will be dreading yet another car chase. Which is rarely said about Jane Austen.
Princess Jellyfish is really good, lots of interesting characters although some can be a bit too one dimensional, particularly the one mentioned in the article.
A series that is currently airing called Snow White With The Red Hair caught me by surprise and might be the purest Josei show I've ever enjoyed. As you can guess from the title it has a fairytale like quality, with a commoner girl and a dashing young prince falling in love. What sets it apart though is the title character, a strong willed girl who feels like she's walked out of a Ghibli movie, you can't help but cheer her on.

etc, you might want to look into honey & clover (about a group of students at an art school), nana (about the friendship between two women, one a fashion student and one a rock musician), nodame cantabile (about the romantic relationship between a pianist and an aspiring conductor), his and her circumstances (the show hideaki anno made after evangelion, about the romantic relationship between two high school students), and revolutionary girl utena (hard to summarize?)

also, a lot of the shows mentioned itt originally aired as part of fuji tv's noitamina block, which is specifically dedicated to programming that appeals to ppl outside of the young male demographic. the noitamina lineup is a p good place to look for "mature" anime in a bunch of different genres

reporting back

PING PONG

Watched all of this one - the animation is obv incredible but what surprised me about it is the persistent and convincing bittersweetness, which helped offset how predictable many/most of the plot/character beats really are. Into it.

KIDS ON THE SLOPE

Also watched all of this, liked it less. The musical sequences are incredible and kept me going. As w/ many shows like this (regardless of genre) the relatively subtly homoerotic friendship >>>>>> the neverending tedium of the actual "romances." (Tho I admit that I have a problem w/ series wherein 100% of the long-running conflicts could be solved with one frank conversation.)

tried UTENA but it's just too mid-90s for me. a couple eps into MUSHI-SHI - animation's gorgeous, stories seem a bit intert? will keep trying.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-AHo-_XEV6E

Maybe most of you guys know all this stuff but its just a little video about the difficulties of making anime.

good timing on that as it frequently refers to Manglobe (Champloo, Michiko) who finally filed for bankruptcy the other day

Just finished watching Gosenzosama Banbanzai, a pretty bizarre and funny six-part OVA from the late 80s. It's one of Mamoru Oshii's more obscure efforts (like that odd "Twilight Q" short), about a girl who travels back in time to live with her ancestors. The whole thing is presented like a stage play, making it pretty unique.

I know Oshii made a big splash with Ghost in the Shell, but I actually think that was his last really good film (though I haven't seen his live action stuff, and discount Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, which he wrote but didn't direct).

so uh toonami is producing two new season of flcl

Nice!

brave new world

oops. didn't realize this was a 3 month revive

I've just started the new anime version of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, and it really defies description (although Merritt Kopas's phrase "Twink Peaks" is pretty apt, as long as you bear in mind that it also involves spectral combat and Gauguin-like color clashes): an escaped serial killer has just been fused into a living statue by a vengeful high school student after attempting to infiltrate the student's house as a malign spirit in rainwater, and this is two episodes in. Idk what kind of relation to anime the ideal viewer would have, but it's certainly distinctive.

Jojo is so batshit, i love it

Neo-Tokyo was really good

finishing up 'puella magi madoka magica' after reading that it rivals evangelion (it doesn't, but i still have a few eps left so maybe it will!)
it's on netflix with or without subs so check it out!

though in the spirit of this thread, i think people who hate anime would hate this one

yeh Madoka is hella anime. You have to put off watching the last two episodes for two months to get the authentic original release experience!

the crossover hit this year in Japan had been the new Shinkai (5cm/second, Garden Of Words) film Your Name.
It's already the 7th highest grossing film at the Japanese box office and looks like it's going to overhaul Howl and Mononoke soon.
Sounds like it became an anime for people who don't normally watch anime!
Looks like it's getting a very limited release in the West though.

Mamoru Hosada's latest The Boy and the Beast will be released in DK next month. Checking his stuff out, the plots are quite intriguing, and Summer Wars was in Locarno. I have no idea what is hatable and non-hatable anime, though. Are people mad at Miyazaki? Or Ghost in the Shell type stuff?

replies*

the character in gurren lagann is just an effeminate gay caricature, a different thing that's more common. what i was referring to before is more like 'this character comes pretty close to being a trans character but explicitly is not and the writing doesn't even seem to be really aware of transness as it actually exists' thing

someone like ed from the original cowboy bebop? (note that i haven't seen cowboy bebop, yes, it's on my to-watch list, a lot of stuff i'm just familiar with through cultural osmosis)

ah not really at all, ed's just an eccentric tomboyish teen who often gets mistaken for a boy and doesn't really care, but that's all fairly incidental? like it isn't really interested in ed's relationship to gender at all or anything, she's just wild and free-spirited etc.

just a random vent, so i'm just kind of running through anime that's hyped as the Best Anime Of All Time(TM) and i get to steins;gate and i see the first episode and yeah it's really likable and funny and the dub is fucking great actually and then i get halfway through episode two and...

for FUCK'S sake that is some of the MOST GRATUITOUSLY UNNECESSARY transphobia i have seen in a while

i admit i haven't done exhaustive research but god if i'd known in advance i would've just avoided watching the show entirely, now i've watched a couple episodes and it _is_ a good show and i _do_ like it a lot except for the COMPLETELY GRATUITOUS AND EGREGIOUS TRANSPHOBIA

can anyone let me know of any other widely acclaimed anime i should specifically avoid? yu yu hashuko is already on my "avoid" list.

kate have YOU seen UTENA, idek what stein;gate is, semicolons in the title are a real dealbreaker

if you use best anime lists from like myanimelist or youtubers you are gonna end up with the taste of a 16 year old dude please don't do that

#notallyoutubers, stevm's top100 has been very useful to me, v cool to check out those 60's Toei ones.

i'm not gonna defend steins;gate as good trans representation or anything but it does actually go somewhere with luka as a trans character (though it's still messy) instead of just sticking to the 'androgynous crossdressing boy played for comic relief' trope that it starts out as. it's a mess but not totally irredeemable

ciderpress otm

with widely acclaimed anime there are often much bigger issues than transphobia (which certainly shows up but isn't the most common), just because a lot of the anime fandom is really quite terrible and is often happy to look past pretty reprehensible stuff, and so something that some youtuber or myanimelist will hype up might turn out to be extremely creepy about children, or be a bland power fantasy featuring gratuitous sexual assault, or so on. please do your research in general. both a problem with the industry and the fandom

otm

my son has just gotten really into Baki, but i can’t tell if it’s problematic beyond just big hulking dudes smashing other dudes (not like that)

i don't think steins;gate is a bad show but it's one of those gateway things with a 'mindblowing' story that people tend to move beyond as they become enthusiasts, like uhhh fight club or christopher nolan movies. i think if you polled only people who have seen a lot of anime it would probably not crack the list

a lot of the stuff you see on anime recommendation lists fall into that category though since most people have not seen a lot of anime, much moreso than with movies

will admit I'd never heard of steins gate before now, when I hear "entry level best anime ever" I think Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Akira, Gundam, One Piece?

anyway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFIL7MjPsMQ

that looks like a good list. glad to see more people talking up On-Gaku which is my favorite anime movie of recent years

posts got me thinking about more modern anime that could now be considered entry level
definitely Attack on Titan, JoJo, maybe Demon Slayer, maybe One Punch Man/Mob Psycho, anything else? feel like Fate Zero and Madoka Magica were this for a while but their stars have faded somewhat.

yeah mostly just the big shonen manga adaptations + anything by the imaishi/yoshinari half of trigger + romcoms are more popular than they used to be so probably more people going straight to those without fear of being called gay for liking girly stuff or w/e

the shonen jump stuff used to run year round so there werent discrete hype cycles for it which left space for other seasonal stuff like the aforementioned to get attention from the 'entry-level' crowd whereas now theres a big shonen or three every season

I don't watch shonen but it's interesting to see which ones become canonised and which ones fade out
like Black Clover is hugely popular within the shonen world but doesn't seem to have much reach outside it, whereas Demon Slayer reached a much wider audience, with Jujutsu Kaisen seemingly stuck between

ok here's The Long List of anime on my to-watch list, there's some other stuff on there as well that i have for like novelty value, or because my friend worked on the english dubs, etc. i do have certain biases, i don't really like the hyperviolent teen boy anime - and steins;gate, for the record, _isn't_ one of those kind of animes. that's the shitty thing, it's genuinely a really good anime with great characters and story. also a really great dub - it's an extremely loose dub but it's really enjoyable and captures the spirit of things very well.

there's just this one scene in the second episode where, i'm gonna just spoiler this for transphobia the main character, rintaro, has a friend named ruka who's a shrine maiden and also a trans woman, and after he visits her he goes off on this internal monologue where he's... actually it's a really good representation of how transphobes struggle with dealing with the reality of trans people. like ruka is clearly and obviously a woman but rintaro can't accept this and keeps repeating "he's a dude". also rintaro has... has issues with reality, he's _not_ a reliable narrator, but usually when he goes off on his crazy rants one of his friends is around to call him on his bullshit. but not here.

anyway the character herself is fine but the way the show handles it is just _captain rainbow_ levels of awful

not as bad as _Mad Bull 34_ mind you, and yes I know _Mad Bull 34_ is satire

also i decided that i just _wasn't_ gonna do ranma 1/2 for personal reasons

anyway The List so far, in order roughly by year

Ashita No Joe
Lupin III
Aim for the Ace! (this actually looks profoundly mediocre but IDK sports anime interests me even though I'm not interested in actual sports)
Galaxy Express 999
Future Boy Conan
Anne of Green Gables
The Rose of Versailles (the consensus here BTW is that Oscar is _not_ transmasc, and based on what I've read I tend to agree; haven't seen the show yet tho)
Ashita No Joe 2
Urusei Yatsura
Touch (even though I know The Twist already)
Maison Ikkoku
Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Tanoshii Moomin Ikka
Sailor Moon
Slam Dunk
The Irresonsible Captain Tylor
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Martian Successor Nadesico
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Cowboy Bebop
Great Teacher Onizuka
Ghost Stories (OK the dub is _very_ South Park/Family Guy inspired and I don't like either of those shows but personal taste, I genuinely find it funny. Including the transphobic joke early in the series. I can see why other people would want to avoid it like the plague though.)
Cromartie High School (actually this might get stricken from the list, it's very Adult Swim style, I don't think it's that funny, and the King Crimson-style soundtrack by Bi Kyo Ran only goes so far; I mean, I don't actually listen to any of Bi Kyo Ran's albums...)
Monster
Windy Tales
Major
Mushishi
Gurren Lagann (one of the first animes I really got into, I saw the movies of these at Gencon in 2011 and they fuck)
Lucky Star
Baccano!
Casshern Sins
Golgo 13 (a guilty pleasure)
Kaiba
Monogatari
Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood (not my usual thing but I can't entirely avoid that sort of thing... I won't go near One Piece because people say if I start watching that I will NEVER STOP)
Welcome to Irabu's Office
The Tatami Galaxy
Hunter X Hunter (another one that, you know, just because it's acclaimed)
Kyousa Giga
Hourou Musuko
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica
Inferno Cop
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (really NOT my style but I feel like I have an obligation for the sake of cultural competency)
Kids on the Slope
Teekyuu
Space Dandy
Your Lie in April
Ping Pong the Animation
NINJA Slayer from ANIMATION
Hibike Euphonium (just because EUPHONIUM, I've heard the first season queerbaits and then backs out in S2 but that Liz To Aoi Tori is genuinely queer)
Keijo!!!!!!!! (look i'm sorry but an ecchi about a sport where girls try to knock each other off platforms using only their boobs and butts sounds like _the hottest trash_. one i'm obviously very down with sports anime and two it reminds me of Kosho from The Prisoner)
Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu
Yagate Kimi Ni Naru (again, Actual Lesbians)
Adachi and Shimamura (Actual Lesbians)
Odd Taxi
Cyberpunk - Edgerunners (not my thing but..)
Heike Monogatari
Bocchi the Rock!
Birdie Wing

Movies on my To Watch list. I've seen Miyazaki's films and I think Grave of the Fireflies, as well as Angel's Egg, Pale Cocoon, Paprika, Your Name, and Night is Short Walk On Girl.

Belladonna of Sadness
Jack and the Beanstalk
Golgo 13 The Professional
Kenya Boy
Birth
A Penguin's Memory (the story of a penguin who has PTSD from Vietnam, no, seriously)
Wings of Tsubasa
Akira
Memories
1001 Nights
Jin-Roh - The Wolf Brigade
Princess Arete
A Tree of Palme
Dead Leaves
Mind Game
Tekkon Kinkreet
Genius Party
Redline
The Garden of Sinners
Little Witch Academia
The Garden of Words
Promare
Asagao to Kase-San (Actual Lesbians)
The Girl from the Other Side

The spring '23 anime that I'm interested in seeing:

Skip and Loafer
Oshi No Ko
Birdie Wing Season 2
Kamikatsu (this seems like _incredibly hot_ trash)

i like almost all of the shows on that first list... havent seen some of the sports stuff. Your Lie in April sticks out as the biggest dud there. i found bloom into you and adachi&shimamura to be kinda bland but maybe you'll get more out of them

i ended up watching cromartie after going down a google rabbit hole of notable dubs. it's kinder than adult swim stuff i find? it is goofy and stonery tho, so i can see how it'd feel like that

also on this kick i watched a few eps of the you're under arrest! dub, which is delightful, but i didn't get as far as the trans (or... not trans? idk how they play the character and/or if it's different in sub v dub) character in that one so i can't speak to it. the dub absolutely rules tho at the very least watch the 60 second clips ppl have posted to twitter with extremely southern non-actor children mumbling their lines

adding my default "put paranoia agent on the list" position altho tbh it's been so long since i've watched it that i have no idea how it's held up

sry if these are all mentioned i tried to do a ctrl-f here and ther

adding my default "put paranoia agent on the list" position altho tbh it's been so long since i've watched it that i have no idea how it's held up

― Ryan seaQuest (Will M.)

saving my satoshi kon binge for another time, haha, kinda like i haven't seen eva because it seems... intimidating

i did add a few things to my to-watch list as a result of the stevem video for sure though he was halfway through his "arthouse" list before he got to something that wasn't already on my list haha

i feel like that's a good sign tho

only thing mentioned that i would definitely recommend avoiding is monogatari but i don't know everything on that list

yeah.. stay away from monogatari. i love the director but it's far too indefensible. maybe add march comes in like a lion instead

thanks, monogatari is off the list!

saw episodes 4 and 5 of "birdie wing". ok, before episode 4 i was iffy on the "lesbian" angle but no, absolutely, this is _incredibly_ lesbian and i am _here_ for it. i mean as soon as vipere showed up everything got like 10,000 times more sapphic.

i also saw watched the first episode of keijo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!121 . i had incredibly high hopes for this and it did not disappoint. like hey, let's take this incredibly ecchi premise and just treat the whole thing as if it was ace wo nerae. i absolutely would have _no_ interest in watching this show if they took any other approach to it... when it comes to ecchi i am _clearly_ not the intended audience.

finally, i dearly love that franz kafka has his own page on MAL. https://myanimelist.net/people/6693/Franz_Kafka

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrfkGV4SrX4

This movie rules in general but I particularly want to point out that the woodland creatures training sumo moves around 6 minutes in are totally adorable.

ok, recent watches

binged the first 13 episodes of slam dunk (1993) with a friend. much more light-hearted and comedy focused than i thought. also verrrry slow-moving. it sort of assumes that the viewer knows nothing at all about basketball, so the protagonist also knows nothing at all. so it's, like, episode 10 before they talk about dribbling, for instance. even though i have no interest in sports i do find that i'm very fond of sports anime.

i've also been watching a lot of art anime. mirae muzui is knocking me out, "dreamland" is absolutely fantastic. it's like the video game crystal castles if it was also "yantra" by james whitney. _strongly_ recommended for people who hate anime. (still not really sure what it means to "hate anime".)

watched the first episode of the three-episode OVA "cybercity oedo 808", which has a legendary sweary dub. it's _definitely_ the point where "hey this is MATURE anime for MATURE ADULTS" becomes completely ridiculous. every character in this thing talks like malcolm tucker.

biggest disappointment is that apparently some of the biggest people subbing old anime are russian putin stans. would prefer if somebody who _isn't_ fash would sub the 1970s tv series about a baseball player who is also the descendent of ninja and wins at baseball using ninpo.

i gave yuru yuri season 3 a shot - i heard it was by a different company from the first two seasons and is much more slice-of-life. this is indeed the case. just to compare i checked out one of the eps from the first two seasons and i got probably five minutes in. it was just completely disgusting and vile. probably anime for people who like anime, it's that bad. i really do prefer my anime with _actual adults_, but, i mean, i'm not the target audience for a lot of the older stuff. obviously.

the big trepidation i had was in checking out stop!! hikari-kun. i've seen some praise for its trans representation... there's a wide diversity of opinions among trans people, so i figured i might find it, you know, disgusting and vile.

which in some ways it is - like, it's super racist and fatphobic and, like a lot of anime, is definitely sexually obsessed with teenage girls - but no really it's _unusually_ trans-affirming for the era. the biggest complaint i see about the series' representation is that everybody else in the show treats her like a boy and misgenders her constantly, but my view is that it's pretty much truth in television. i was alive in 1983. _nobody_ would have treated hikari like the girl she is. apparently the series creator is one of those classic "boy i wish i could have been a girl but obviously that was impossible so i drew this manga instead" people you see sometimes, a real kalonymus ben kalonymus type.

like basically the whole humor of the show is that hikari is a totally normal teenage girl and acts like a totally normal teenage girl (well i mean she's a little bit mary-sue, but honestly i'm gonna give eguchi hisashi a free pass on that one), and it's everybody else who's all weird about it and keeps saying that she's a "pervert", and they all look stupid and weird for saying it. which they are! so mission accomplished, i'd say. oh and by "normal girl" by the way i mean hikari doesn't fall into the stereotype julia serano talks about in "skirt chasers", she's not an exaggerated image of hyper-femininity or anything like that.

apparently the creator sort of ran out of ideas midway through and the later issues/episodes are more stereotypical and lame, and it doesn't have a proper ending. i know there are a lot of people clamoring for a ranma 1/2 remake... idk given that the humor in this show (aside from, like, the racism and fatphobia) is pretty much all making fun of transphobes, it'd probably be possible to do a remake of it and have it turn out pretty good. i really appreciate that it's not all serious and dramatic and shit.

anyway. i really loved the episode i saw. a girl who responds to everyone around her freaking out about her being trans (and yes this is an anachronistic interpolation, but she behaves more like a trans girl than basically any other representation of a gender non-conforming character i've seen in this era) with an attitude of "what's your problem, anyway?" is absolutely the kind of representation i want and, well, mostly don't get.

Lately I've been thinking of the racist western perception of anime in the 80's/90's as quickly made, shoddy product without effort and artistry going into it, and comparing that with all the stories of animators all but falling dead at their desks from insane fucking workloads. Bitter lols.

doubly sad cos the quality of the animation in anime during the 80s/90s is probably the peak of the medium, just watching random OVAs made during the bubble times can be really eye opening. also I've been watching lots of Cat's Eye and City Hunter recently and I love the aesthetic so much.

i think i'm gonna have to watch city hunter even though the plot doesn't interest me at all because it seems like the absolute _most_ '80s economic bubble anime ever. just, like, the "outrun" of anime.

re: animators all but falling dead at their desks... the main one who comes to mind there is Eiichiro Oda, who does have an insane fucking workload but more because he's an obsessive artist who apparently has devoted his entire life to One Piece. that said yeah animators and mangaka aren't exactly highly valued, any more than anyone who does creative work under capitalism... ah, well, i'm not gonna preach to the choir on _that_ one again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2HCVOH6DtA

oh my god i think i found the perfect anime for people who hate anime: yokohama kaidashi kikou

it’s soooooo good

best slice of life shit ever

the comics are probably even better…

and amazingly after decades of waiting the manga are currently being released in English for the first time, just got the third omnibus the other day!

yeah classic manga. you could also try Aria or Windy Tales if you want more anime like that

one of the genres of anime i'm binging on is slice of life, for sure. that and sports anime. did i mention watching 13 episodes of "slam dunk" in one go?

i've kind of been delving into '80s anime without fight scenes (and i guess "anime without fight scenes" meets the criterion of "anime for people who hate anime" right there), and i find myself wondering about this series called "high school! kimengumi". just because none of it has ever even been fan-translated and it was hugely popular, it had, like, seven different OPs. there weren't many anime that seem to have achieved that level of popularity around then... it seems to have been popular on the level of something like "touch" or "maison ikkoku", both of which are watchable (and beloved) in english. also, all the descriptions of the show i can find talk about it as being about a group of 5 male high school students... but looking at the openings of the manga the focus seems to be totally on the character of yui kawa. i mean maybe it is about these 5 high school boys, but they're not the ones in the opening credits, is all i'm saying. (i mean i haven't seen the full OPs, admittedly, but there are _seven_ OPs...)

there does seem to be a fansub of the film from 1986 called "High School! Funny-face Club", and they definitely do have funny faces!

https://i.imgur.com/PPyIYyn.png

yeah, i might wanna check out the film

so here's what i'm pissed about right now... i'm _really_ into weird psychedelic animation, and the '73 cutie honey seems like it has tons of that, alongside some peak '70s funk. i would be so into those bits... _except_ that go nagai is a fucking creep and the '73 cutie honey is full of fucking creepy shit.

anyway here's ilx faves perfume covering the cutie honey theme

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3DheLP03vY

and here's somebody who _isn't_ into go nagai's creepy misogyny shit talking about early magical girls, this is cool. unfortunately they seem to have ended the series but there is some pretty cool stuff here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUt6PperTKI

ok so i'm reading this book that's from 2015 called the Anime Encyclopedia and i'm enjoying it immensely. i'm the sort of girl who reads encyclopedias cover-to-cover, though in this case i'm only in the "b"s. what i like about this is that it's by some crusty old british grognards who did anime dubbing and importing back in the '90s, i think

they're not shy at expressing their opinions and my feeling is that if you ask them about MAL they'll respond with something like "Mal? That's french for 'bad', isn't it?"

so it's a lot of fun because they'll complain that saying, say, "mangaka" instead of "manga author" is "obstructively arcane" or how the invention of the term "light novel" was unnecessary and duplicative. i have a certain fondness for linguistic prescriptivism. at the same time i never knew what the origin of "yaoi" and "yuri" actually were, or that in Japan they used to refer to TV as a "Braun tube". I also had never heard of "Chokyo".

Which is another little oddity of their encyclopedia - it covers hentai right alongside kids' anime, so that "Anal Vampire" (described in the text as "a demon who sucks ass rather than blood") is covered shortly before Animal Yokocho, which is, in fact, the anime I want to gush about here.

It's pretty unknown among the MAL crowd, who might not be entirely on board with an anime about a cute five-year-old girl who and her three utterly adorable animal friends who try to help her do things like... bake a cake! And do her homework! This is a show that a five-year-old could watch and enjoy lots. It's also just the most _delightful_ thing.

Ami-chan: "What are you doing?"
Iyo the rabbit: "Researching rabbits."
Ami-chan: "You don't have to research it..."
Iyo: "Ami-chan, the most difficult thing in this world... is to understand yourself."

It reminds me a _lot_ of Animaniacs, honestly.

Earlier this week I wrote (and apparently didn't post) a whole long gush about how episode 77 of "Mahoutsukai Sally" absolutely punched above its level in terms of telling a great story (I guess I didn't mention that here? The upshot is that I found it to be a creative, entertaining, and _coherent_ story, which is something that's _extremely_ rare in '60s and '70s anime. To accomplish like that with no budget and no time, in a 60s cartoon for young girls... that's exceptional. Oh, did I mention that the episode hasn't been subbed or dubbed, and that I don't understand Japanese?)

...anyway, Animal Yokocho maybe punches even more above its respective level. It's these shows that fans ignore, maybe because they don't have gratuitous violence or "fanservice"...

One of the other things I like about the Anime Encyclopedia is that, despite gladly reviewing the entirety of the Pink Pineapple catalog, they don't look any more fondly on "fanservice" than I do. Reading their review on Bakemonogatari they'll tell you "Fan service, questionable behavior verging on molestation, and brief, intensely bloody action scenes are part of the mix." I'd rather hear that than ten thousand reviews gushing about how well the story is contructed.

It's a real problem for me watching anime... MAL tends to not level with one about this sorts of stuff. I tried watching an anime about girls making a videogame! One of the programmers was up so late she slept on the floor! Without pants! And didn't put on pants even when a new employee walked through the door and introduced herself!

It's less that it's creepy - though it is creepy - and more that its devotion to being creepy requires them to make all of the characters behave in nonsensical and uninteresting ways. It's the "uninteresting" part that kills this stuff for me. Issa the panda, Kenta the bear, and Iyo the rabbit all behave in nonsensical ways, but their antics are _entertaining_ to watch. "Fanservice" just _isn't_ entertaining most of the time. (Keijo!!!!!!!! is a notable exception.)

I just know I'm going to spend my twilight years doing a marathon of every episode of Sazae-san, in order.

so it's been a while and i've been continuing my anime deep dive. i guess i am kinda talking to myself here. there are spaces where people talk really in-depth about anime and i'm not wanting to get involved in those spaces right now... internet social spaces are a little iffy for me

anyway i'm starting to learn more about my most niche anime interest, which is '70s anime

this month i got to know the name of osamu dezaki. this guy had a very distinct style, and i like it a lot. when i started watching "ashita no joe" it struck me immediately, how different it was from what the anime i was familiar with looked like. like most anime of the time, "ashita no joe" doesn't have fluid or sophisticated animation. what it does have is shit-tons of style. almost like what gets called a "motion comic" sometimes - taking one pretty detailed drawing and panning across it. often in a triple-take, three times in a row... i've heard that this is a cost-saving technique, but mostly i see it used for dynamic impact... the triple takes are really quick, and don't take up that much screen time.

the show i've been really digging into is "aim for the ace!", which is a really well-loved sports anime - i also learned that hideki anno's early anime "gunbuster", which i haven't seen, was an outer space riff on "aim for the ace". anyway, aim for the ace is just a show i love a lot, visually. the character designs are just really different from what i usually think of as character designs. harsh. angular. even the character who's supposed to be the "pretty" one is about a million miles away from the "moe" stereotype.

honestly i just have a hard time finding moe characters super relatable. i just heard about a "girls love" show called "lesbian bear storm". on paper a show called "lesbian bear storm" is right up my alley. in practice, anime seems to have a real problem with the idea that there's anybody in the world older than 15. also, i think this is ... i mean you see fat-shaming everywhere, but it's particularly prevalent in japan. for me as a lesbian, this is a problem. part of what i struggle with in anime particularly is characters who pander to the male gaze, and when i see character designs like the ones in "lesbian bear storm", that's kind of the feeling i get. to me, part of having good representation is being able to see fat dykes! and not just because that's also my aesthetic preference. :)

when it comes for aim for the ace... it's not a queer show. that said, a lot of the emotional drama of this show is driven by the main character, hiromi, wanting to be _really good friends_ with the star player, madame butterfly. this kind of stuff in the modern day sometimes gets dismissed as "yuri bait", teasing lesbianism for the male gaze.

i do wonder how much of it is inherent to the "shoujo" genre. it wasn't until the '60s that women started becoming the major creators of anime for girls. the manga of "aim for the ace" was one of the first of those works. i didn't grow up with shoujo, but i did grow up with the children's book series "something queer is going on". i grew up in an era where you _couldn't_ be out as queer if you were making creative work for an audience that includes children. there's a pretty negative narrative around queer people who do that. it's still stigmatized, but there seem to be exceptions now at least, with non-binary people like rebecca sugar and n.d. stephenson both creating really great work in that medium.

i don't think it really matters whether someone like elizabeth levy, who wrote the "something queer is going on" books, is herself queer. she created a work that allowed me to understand queerness in women and my relationship to that queerness. as an adult, i get the same kind of feeling from the parts of "aim for the ace". from the beginning there _is_ a guy who hiromi's interested in, todo, but this doesn't diminish my ability to read hiromi as queer. there's an episode where the lead character hiromi's best friend teases her about not paying any attention to todo's tennis playing. she _is_ interested in todo! she's just _more_ interested in madame butterfly. this is kind of why there's such a thing as "late bloomer lesbians" - comphet, compulsory heterosexuality. it's not that she's _not_ interested in guys like todo. he's attractive. someone like madame butterfly, though, is just so much more _exciting_! she just wants to be around madame butterfly all the time and wants madame butterfly to like her the way she likes madame butterfly. as a _really good friend_.

the thing that i love most about dezaki's work here is the way he uses his art to portray hiromi's heightened internal emotional states in a dramatic and compelling way. the sound effects... i'm ok with them. i saw a video from a guy complaining about the way japanese television relies on constant sound effects, which does trace back at least as far as this anime. i don't think the use of sound effects _enhances_ the emotional impact of the show. they're a little more obtrusive than the "stingers" used in the west, but no more heavy handed than, say, murray gold's scores for "doctor who".

i've started to come around to gold's work, incidentally. yes, his work is _extremely_ heavy-handed and didactic, basically yelling very loudly at the viewer about how they are supposed to feel. the upside is that by carrying the didactic load of the show, the rest of it is freed to be nuanced and subtle. plus, his music is better than albert glasser's. worst comes to worst i can do like all the millennials do and just read the subtitles... the stereo sound mixing of everything is dogshit. maybe it sounds better in 5.1. i don't know anybody who watches tv in 5.1.

in "aim for the ace", the plots are melodramatic, the music is melodramatic. dezaki's art, though? the best way i can describe it is "surreal". the mean girls mock her and all of a sudden the art starts looking like the spider-man episode "revolt in the fifth dimension". the colors of the backgrounds, too, are not at all remotely naturalistic. it's actually interesting how many of the color schemes in these '70s anime resemble various queer flags. honestly, i just think it's because the flags in question are color-coordinated. if you're doing a background based around two colors, orange and purple are good colors for that, particularly if the sun is setting. it's not intentionally lesbian. i've just gotten really really used to getting my queer content from subtext.

dezaki also has a tendency to use more dutch angles than _battlefield earth_. he uses them better than that film does. also, it's better than the constant low angles anime today _habitually_ uses when showing female characters from behind. every single shot of female characters in anime feels like it's about a three degree angle away from being a creepshot. well, no, there are also shots which are actual creepshots, or as they say in japan, "fan service". because that's certainly what _i_ want as a fan. not a compelling story or characters or art, no, i only watch anime because i want to see drawings of a 12 year old character flashing her underwear. (because i don't usually use sarcasm, i will be super-obvious and say that the preceding is, in fact, sarcasm.)

it's not that i'm a prude. i find the constant jiggle shots in "keijo!!!!!!!" delightful, though not actually tittilating, because they're genuinely plot-relevant. i feel the same way about magical girl transformation sequences. i mean if somebody really gets their rocks off by looking at animation of a naked girl without nipples superimposed on a sea of stars, i personally don't feel exploited as a woman. i just think those sequences look cool.

lol, i had so much more i wanted to talk about here too, but i've already spent an hour gushing about the two episodes of aim for the ace i've seen, so i guess i'll cut it for now. this boring work meeting is almost over.

by the way one of the video essays i watched was by someone who watched every episode of "lupin iii" and said that was a bad idea. which is enough to convince me to _not_ do a marathon of every episode of sazae-san. i did learn that "angel's egg" was originally supposed to be a lupin iii film. after "castle of cagliostro" miyazaki said "hey you know who you should get to make a lupin film, mamoru oshii". and oshii was like ok so i got an idea, a mad scientist builds a new tower of babel in the middle of tokyo and then jumps off it, in the process he discovers a fossilized angel which lupin then becomes interested, by the end of the movie lupin has stolen reality itself

the people making the film said "my friend we got enough shit for 'mystery of mamo', how about no"

in my headcanon, however, there is a prototype cabinet of "cliff hanger ii" wherein one replays the plot of "angel's egg" by entering perfectly timed button presses

(y'all know the story of "cliff hanger"? the first time any of miyazaki's work was seen in the us, if i have my facts right)

when it comes for aim for the ace... it's not a queer show.

it's just, you know. a sports show. about women who play tennis. like, you know, billie jean king. who is namechecked in the show as one of the inspirations for the players. (in fairness, the other tennis player they namecheck, margaret court, is virulently homophobic. also, i was very relieved when reading about billie jean king that, unlike a lot of other women's tennis players of her generation, she does _not_ seem to have been openly transphobic. in 1977, she played in a women's tournament which included renee richards, a trans woman, as a competitor, and she got a lot of shit from players like chris evert and martina navratilova, who are both transphobic to this day, for it.)

frieren is really good

ok so this is the exact opposite of anime for people who hate anime but god damn i can see "gushing over magical girls" becoming my favorite dark magical girl anime of all time

yall utena is just a REALLY REALLY BIG FAN OF MAGICAL GIRLS!!!!!!!!

an anime dub but it's just a dub remix of the original episode soundtrack

preferably "cowboy bebop", i wanna hear the mad professor or someone remix yoko kanno and the seatbelts

but i guess like flcl or something would work